Joyce A Schroeder, PhD

UACC Information

Dr. Schoeder's laboratory investigates the role of the ErbB receptors in driving breast cancer, with an emphasis on the role of HUGL, MUC1 and CD44 to modulate EGFR function. They have identified the loss of apicobasal polarity as a driver in EGFR-driven breast cancer, through its mislocalization and interaction with the apical protein MUC1. Additionally, they have identified HUGL1 as a polarity protein that acts as a tumor suppressor in EGFR-driven breast cancer and shown that loss of EGFR regulation can drive CD44-dependent cancer progression.

They utilize human cell lines, transgenic and knockout mice, xenograft models and primary human tissues to evaluate tumor growth and metastasis by analyzing protein trafficking and degradation, signal transduction and interactions with the microenvironment. Her work as a graduate student and postdoctoral fellow focused on the role of the erbB receptors and MUC1 in mammary gland development and breast cancer progression.

In Dr. Schoeder's laboratory at the University of Arizona, they have furthered our understanding of the role of MUC1 in regulating EGFR during breast cancer progression, and developed a peptide-based therapeutic for the targeting of these interactions in cancer. This was followed by the development of a peptide-based therapeutic to simultaneously inactivate kinase-dependent and –independent functions of EGFR, HER2 and ERBB3 simultaneously. They are now focused on the development of these peptide-based therapeutics to target tumor-specific protein-protein interactions as well as investigating the mechanisms of polarity as a suppressor of transformation and metastasis.

Dr. Schoeder is the co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Arizona Cancer Therapeutics (ACT), a company they created to bring their targeted therapeutics to clinical trials. She is also president of Alliance Therapeutics, a management company for ACT.